Mined from the notebooks and adapted from the Twitter feed, Thursday, February 28, 2019. Posted Monday afternoon, March 4.
Keating: “Why do I stand up here? Anybody?” Dalton: “To feel taller!” Keating: “No! [Dings a bell with his foot] Thank you for playing Mr. Dalton. I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.” A scene in “Dead Poets Society” that shocked and I hope delighted my Ball State students when they saw the movie the summer after they’d taken my class. It shocked and delighted me, anyway.
[Editor’s note: This post is sort of a belated birthday card to myself. Yep. My birthday was this past Thursday. I know you’re sorry you missed it and I accept your apologies.]
Comedian Kath Barbadoro started a Twitter conversation the other day by asking her followers “who are the best and worst fictional haracters you have been compared to?”
Being a literarily-minded sort, I immediately started thinking of characters from books I’ve been compared to. One of the first and best is Scrooge’s nephew Fred.
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
That was by a coworker at the bookstore I worked at in Boston back when I was like Fred, young, ruddy, handsome, eyes a-sparkle, and all in a glow, and rapid walking was my usual method of self-transport. She didn’t actually quote that passage. I don’t think she even knew she was talking about Fred. She just called me a character from Dickens because of how I maintained by Christmas humour to the last during the increasingly hectic shopping weeks leading up to the big day. But I knew she meant Fred, even if she didn’t, and I was pleased to accept the compliment.
Also back in college someone compared me to Mr Darcy. I forget who. I don’t think it was a girlfriend or a would-be girlfriend. But I’m pretty sure it was a girl. And I don’t think she meant it entirely as a criticism, even though the way she thought Darcy and I were alike was in our aloofness in company. I chose to focus more on our both being romantic objects of intellectual women’s desire.
So that wasn’t the worst.
Raskolnikov. That was the worst.
I can’t remember who made that one.
Wasn’t my landlady though. I’m pretty sure of that.
But it turned out Barbadoro’s followers were more likely to think of movie and television characters they’d been compared to. Barbadoro herself led off with…
here's me.
best: John Goodman in The Big Lebowski
worst: every character Rebel Wilson has ever played
That cracked me up.
But that made it an easy one for me.
Best is Robin Williams’ character in “Dead Poet’s Society”.
Worst is Nicolas Cage’s character/characters in “Adaptation”.
The Dead Poets comparison was made by a number of my students at Ball State who had taken my classes just before the movie came out. It was released in the summer and they were shocked to see their professor being played by Robin Williams.
Well, they were shocked to see Robin Williams doing things and saying things I’d said in class. I even stood on my desk to make the same point about seeing things from a different perspective. And, by the way, I usually got up there by making a standing jump up onto the desk. Top that, Mork, I thought when I saw the movie and was shocked at seeing myself on the screen.
Obviously, my classroom style was influenced by a teacher who’d been influenced by a teacher who’d been influenced by a teacher who’d been influenced...you get the picture. It probably goes all the way back to the University of Paris, if not to Plato’s academy. One of the ancestral branches must have reached into the prep school where the teacher Williams’ character is based on was inspired by a teacher who was...et cetera.
The standing jump was my own inspiration though. I don’t remember any of my teachers doing a standing jump onto their desks. I had several who I’m sure could have, including a couple of nuns.
So, as you can imagine, I’m justly proud of that comparison.
The Nicolas Cage in “Adaptation” comparison? Not so much
I’m especially not keen on it because it was made by...Pop Mannion!
It’s even worse than you think, depending on which of the two brothers Cage played he meant, Charlie or Donnie. I don’t know which he did. He might have meant both. He didn’t explain. I didn’t give him a chance. He said it offhandedly as he was telling me he’d just watched the movie on HBO and was asking me to explain it to him because, as was his practice, he’d watched it out of the corner of his eye while he was doing some work or reading a book, which he’d never admit got in the way of his following what was on the TV. I think he was convinced he was giving both the book and the TV his full attention. Pop could take in at a glance what it takes a normal person hours of intense concentration to comprehend, but that didn’t mean he took everything in. He’d miss key points, key lines of dialog, key scenes, and he knew it. So when something he’d read or watched baffled him, he’d ask me to do the unbaffling.
This time, though, I led with “You think I’m like him?”
That shut down the discussion.
Pop realized I hadn’t taken it as a compliment. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, knowing him. He meant it as an objective observation. What he’d objectively observed about Cage/Charlie/Donald and me I’ll never know. I hope he’d just looked up from his book in time to glimpse a shot of Cage in a flannel shirt sitting and frowning at his typewriter and noted a passing resemblance. I hope so, anyway.
But sometimes I wonder what Pop actually thought of me…
Epilogue: These days the movie character I’ve often been compared to as a compliment is Alec Guinness’ Obi-wan Kenobi. It’s mainly a physical comparison, but not wholly. The literary and television character I’m most often compared to is Rumpole of the Bailey.
It’s Mrs M who likes to make that comparison.
I’m not sure she likes it when I compare her to Hilda in return.
Lance (whispering): Also known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.
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Your turn: Best and worst fictional characters---from movies, television shows, or books---you’ve been compared to or you’d compare yourself to?
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